Austrian Red Cross in hot water after ‘rejecting’ blood donations from Muslims

Austria's Red Cross has come under fire from the local Islamic community after one of its doctors reportedly refused to accept blood donations from Muslims or donors of Turkish origin due to the risk of Hepatitis B.

Austria-based charity group for Austrian Muslims, the IRG
foundation, which has been campaigning to donate blood, reported
on its website a Red Cross doctor from Linz, Austria’s
third-biggest city, refused over the phone to accept blood
donations “from Muslim or Turkish donors” including
those born in Austria. The Islamic Religious Community of Linz
has been outraged by the decision, which sparked religious
prejudice concerns.

According to IRG foundation chairman Murat Baser, as cited by the
Muslim-focused WorldBulletin.net, when a similar campaign was run
by the charity last year, it was fully supported by Red Cross.

Following the incident, the director of the Red Cross in Linz,
Christian Gabriel, told daStandart.at online portal that the
doctor who has communicated with the Islamic religious community,
“in no case had discriminatory intent.” He stressed
there is no religious requirement for blood, with the only key
factor being that the donor is healthy.

Gabriel explained that they already had some experience with
various cultural organizations from the South Eastern European
region and “de facto, all went wrong with these
collaborations. In some blood drives, we found a hepatitis B
prevalence of over 40 percent."

Gabriel said that “in the second and third generation
migrants can already look different,” and a person who since
birth was monitored by the Austrian health care system is much
less likely to have Hepatitis B antibodies in their blood. He
pointed out that in this case the problem is mostly ethical for
cultural association fundraisers, who would have to tell families
who come to donate blood that not all of them can do that.

The head of the Vienna Blood Donation Center, Eva Menichetti,
explained in an interview with the APA news agency, that anyone
who was born or grew up in hepatitis B zones is excluded from
blood donation, as well as those who lived in the areas where
malaria is spread. She stated that when the second-generation
members were not accepted, this was "a
misunderstanding.” It was stated that admission to donate
blood had nothing to do with religion or culture, but with the
place of birth.

It's not the first time blood donations have raised public
concerns. In December, Israel’s version of the Red Cross, Magen
David Adom, refused to accept a blood donation from an
Ethiopian-born Knesset member during a blood drive outside
parliament. According to an MDA statement, under existing Israeli
law Pnina Tamano-Shata couldn’t give blood because she lived in
Ethiopia for the first three years of her life and was
"potentially exposed to pathogens that could put recipients
of blood donations at increased risk."

Tamano-Shata, a member of parliament for the centrist Yesh Atid
party, argued that the rejection was “further proof that
‘equal rights’ for Ethiopians in Israel is a nice slogan that
doesn’t exist in reality,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency
reported. "I'm 32, I arrived in Israel at the age of three,
did my military service and have two children. There's no reason
to treat me in this way," she told Channel 10 television.
Magen David Adom officials later agreed to take Tamano-Shata's
blood, but only to freeze it.